The Scout Report - October 20, 1995

October 20, 1995

A Service to the Internet Community
Provided by the Info Scout and the InterNIC


The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report on the InterNIC server:
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sr/

Additional information and detailed access and subscription instructions are included at the end of each Scout Report.

Highlights In This Week's Report:

World Wide Web:

  • CareerPath offers a searchable index of employment ads from six major newspapers: The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News, and The Washington Post. The total ads available on October 21 was 21,442. The site is attractive and easy to use.
    http://www.careerpath.com/
  • Europages is a pan-European purchaser's guide featuring a selection of 150,000 companies from 25 European countries. Published in collaboration with the major European telecom companies for 13 years, it is now available online. Europages can be searched in 5 languages, and additional languages will be available in the near future. Europages' Economic Info Service provides an economic indicators for all the industrial, commercial and service sectors driving Europe's economy. A selection of tables, maps and graphs presents the key figures and main short- and medium-term trends for each of the 18 Europages sectors can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat. (A link to Adobe is provided to download the Acrobat reader.)
    http://www.europages.com/
  • The Geometry Forum is "An Electronic Community for Lovers of Geometry." An NSF-funded project at Swarthmore College, the Geometry Forum is a great place for geometry and math teachers to locate curriculum ideas, software for mathematics, Internet math projects, and information about professional organizations. The student center offers a problem of the week, project of the month, the Internet geometry hunt, student hangouts on the Internet (where students talk about school and math), and students publications. The Geometry Forum has been re-designed and is attractive, easy to navigate, and very friendly. The site is searchable, a Help Desk is included, and the staff is available for questions.
    http://forum.swarthmore.edu/math.topics.html
  • The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and PSGnet with partial funding from the National Science Foundation have established a Web server offering a database of information about international networking developments and connectivity providers, with its major emphasis on countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Oceania, and Latin America. Topics include: networking in the developing world, low cost networking tools, general computer networking info, and networking tips and frequently asked questions.
    http://www.nsrc.org/
  • The One Earth Gallery maintains links to those "companies and organizations that demonstrate a commitment to cultivating respect and responsibility towards ourselves, each other, and our natural world" in the categories of Environment, Health, and Social Action. The "1Earth Hot Spot of the Week" features inspiring, and well-executed socially progressive WWW sites.
    http://www.1earth.com/
  • The Yuckiest Site on the Internet, featuring Cockroach World: "How do we explain the Yuckiest Site on the Internet? It's a bonanza of creativity, facts and activities for children of all ages! Created, in partnership, with Liberty Science Center, the nation's newest major science education center, it has been carefully researched, written and designed to introduce the fascinating world of insects to the general public in a friendly and unintimidating way. We're very proud that the yuckiest site on the Internet is an educationally sound experience for children. Under the guidance of Liberty Science Center and entomologist Dr. Betty Faber, kids learn all about insects by interacting with a variety of cockroach activities. As children become engaged by the maps, photos and graphics in each gallery, they will be called upon to use their eyes, ears, minds and their sense of adventure."
    http://www.nj.com/yucky/index.html

Gopher

  • The Apple Computer Gopher Server offers an Apple Support Area and the Tech Info Library. The support area provides current product information, software updates, the Top 20 Tech Info library articles, information about the Quicktime lawsuit, opendoc, and more. The Tech Info Library contains hundreds of documentation sheets on Apple hardware and software from the Apple II through Lisa to the Mac, including peripherals, and white papers and a third-party company directory. For searching instructions look under "About the Tech Info Library."
    Support Area: Support Area
    http://www.apple.com/support/
    Tech Info Library
    http://til.info.apple.com/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The Television News Archive began at Vanderbilt University on August 5, 1968 because television news was not consistently recorded, preserved and made accessible for research anywhere. After a quarter century, the Archive remains unique in systematically recording, abstracting and indexing the most widely viewed national television newscasts so that they are readily available for study. The Archive produces a monthly publication, "Television News Index and Abstracts," that is a guide to the collection. The electronic version of this guide is available via gopher, and is searchable.
    tvnews.vanderbilt.edu

Electronic Mailing Lists

  • NETDYNAM is a list dedicated to an examination of online group dynamics: the purpose will be to examine the process itself of writing through listservers -- perceptions of the other participants, the dynamics of flame wars, power and persuasion, what is effective communication and why.... This will ideally be done in an atmosphere of mutual support and trust but it -- emphatically -- will not be group psychotherapy. The purpose of the list will be the search for dynamic principles of online mailing lists in general. The operation of the list will be as open and non-directive as possible, based on the Tavistock model of group dynamics projects where rules and explicit expectations are initially kept in abeyance so that they may emerge, be examined and formulated, spontaneously. One important advantage of email for this kind of project is that every piece of data (piece of email) can be looked at and compiled -- statistically perhaps -- and participants are encouraged to develop testable hypotheses about online group dynamics. Archives of NETDYNAM mail items are kept in monthly files. You may obtain a list of files in the archives by sending the command INDEX NETDYNAM.

    send mail to: LISTSERV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
    in the body of the message type: SUB NETDYNAM yourfirstname yourlastname
    Note: Archive available at the following site: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/netdynam.html

  • USPE-L is an open, unmoderated discussion list featuring conversations about quality K-12 physical education. Things such as teaching methods in K-12 physical education; curriculum implementation; local, state, or national conference information; and conversations centered on quality physical education practices are likely to be discussed.

    send email to: LISTSERV@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
    in the body of the message type: SUB USPE-L

NetBytes

  • Anthony's list of Internet Accessible Machines will bring you to those corners of the Internet where coke machines, geiger counters, video-cams (separate sections for indoor and outdoor) and remote-operated robots live. There are dozens of things to choose from: you can play with a model railroad, check on the status of Paul Haas's hottub, see the action live on Hollywood & Vine, throw a snowball, or "Talk to some guy". Nice to see craziness is alive and well on the 'Net.
    http://www.geocities.com/~anderberg/ant/machines/

Weekend Scouting

  • Hotel Anywhere, "The Internet Travel Grid", is searchable and is organized geographically and by subject, including airlines, hotels, cruises, travel agencies and auto rentals. It provides links to two direct on-line airline reservation search and booking tools that link into the same Apollo reservation system used by travel agents: The Internet Travel Network and PC Travel.
    http://www.earthlink.net/~hotelanywhere/
    [Note: When last checked by the Internet Scout team, this site URL was no longer available.]
  • The Weightlifting Page begins with a quote by Benjamin Franklin:"I live temperately, drink no wine, and use daily the exercise of the dumbbell ..." and goes on to provide links to FAQs, newsgroups, nutrition and flexibility pages, organizations, and dozens of other related Internet resources. Zen and the Art of Weightlifting is included for beginners.
    http://www.islavista.net/weightlifting/

About the Scout Report

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offered by the InterNIC to the Internet community as a fast, convenient way to stay informed about network activities. Its purpose is to combine in one place selected new (and newly-discovered) Internet resources.

A wide range of topics are included in the Report with an emphasis on resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, the research and education community. Each resource has been verified for substantial content and accessibility within a day of the release of the Report.

The Scout Report is provided in multiple formats -- mailing lists for both a plain text and HTML version, and World Wide Web. The World Wide Web version of the Report includes links to all listed resources. The report is released every weekend.

In addition to the plain text version, the Scout Report is distributed in HTML format allowing sites to post the Scout Report on local WorldWideWeb servers each week. The result is faster access for local users. You are welcome and encouraged to re-post and re-distribute the report. Note that copyright statements appear on all versions of the Scout Report, and we ask that these be included when re-posting or re-distributing.

If you haven't yet subscribed or told your friends and colleagues, now is the time. Spread the news by word-of-net. Join 20,000 of your colleagues already using the Scout Report as a painless tool for tracking what's new on the 'Net!

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu

-- Susan Calcari
InterNIC Info Scout

Scout Report Access Methods

  • To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each Friday, join the scout-report mailing list. You will receive one message a week -- the Scout Report every weekend.

    send email to: majordomo@lists.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

    subscribe scout-report
    to unsubscribe to the list, repeat this procedure substituting the word "unsubscribe" for subscribe.
    • To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week.

      send mail to: majordomo@lists.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

      subscribe scout-report-html

      Resource Addressing Conventions

      After each resource in the Scout Report one or more network addresses are listed. Every attempt is made to use the same convention in each listing for the network address of each resource. It is assumed that users recognize the type of address and know how to use it. However, for those users unfamiliar with the Internet we provide here the order in which addresses are listed (by network tool.) A brief explanation of one tool, WWW is included below.

      The four network tools referenced most often in the Scout Report are World Wide Web, gopher, email, and FTP. Occasionally WAIS and Telnet addresses are also listed.

      After each resource at least one address is listed, and sometimes more. This is because some resources are available using multiple network tools. The network tool addresses are always listed in the same order after each resource:

      • World Wide Web (WWW)
      • Gopher
      • FTP
      • Email
      • Telnet
      • WAIS
      A WWW address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and always begins with a string of characters followed by a colon and two forward slashes. For example:

      http://www.internic.net/
      gopher://gibbs.oit.unc.edu:70/11/research.d/grants.d
      ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt

      To access the resource through the WWW you can use a WWW browser installed on your desktop computer, or a "command-line" WWW client on your local Internet host computer. Web browsers are available for all major computer platforms, including Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. Check with your local support center or your Internet Service Provider for more information about Web browsers installed on the Internet host computer or your desktop computer.

      Copyright Susan Calcari, 1995.

      Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice, this permission notice, and the two paragraphs below are preserved on all copies.

      The InterNIC provides information about the Internet and the resources on the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.

      Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.